Briser le silence

“When I was a teenager, I would ask my parents questions about their past. “Why did you run away from Laos? Why did you choose France?” Silence. “That's the past. We have to forget it,” my father would answer. I was helpless as his reply was like a slap in the face. I was an adult when I discovered I had an elder sister while flipping through a photograph album. It was the face of a child. She had died during the turmoil of the Vietnam War. Nobody had ever spoken to me about her. After this revelation, I decided to go and pick up the lost threads of the history of my parents and that of thousands of other Hmong immigrants. I invited my father to come on a journey to Laos. He accepted to follow me and go back to the country he left 40 years ago. Today, at last, my father feels ready to talk." Isabelle Vang

"My parents arrived in France from Poland in 1983 in the same conditions as Isabelle's parents. They never told me anything about it and always remained in the background. They never spoke about their past. The two of us were moved by this coincidence for it took us back into our respective childhoods. We, the children of immigrants, didn't know anything about had really happened. How do we reclaim our history, know it better, understand our dual heritage better?" P. Lisiak